


The Ship that Lost its Soul

by Amberdreams



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, machine with a soul, non scientific sci fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:57:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9984161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams
Summary: Set in another universe where humanity is spread across the galaxy, the Winchesters roam far and wide in the American galaxy, hunting monsters in their spaceship, the Impala. Then Sam sacrificed himself in order to stop the apocalypse, steering Lucifer’s vessel into a black hole known as the Cage. Dean thinks Sam is lost to him forever, so it’s a mystery to be solved when Dean receives Sam’s frozen body in the post. Obviously Dean’s first priority is to unfreeze Sam, but nothing is ever that simple for the Winchesters.





	

Big thanks go to my artist  [](http://azziria.livejournal.com/profile) [ azziria ](http://azziria.livejournal.com/) for the lovely and perfectly appropriate art! You can check out the full set **[here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9947894)** – go and leave her all the love, because, like Sam, it's worth it.  
And thanks also to my beta,  [](http://jj1564.livejournal.com/profile) [](http://jj1564.livejournal.com/) jj1564 for the cheerleading as well as feedback and help spotting errors. Any remaining cock ups are all mine.  


[ ](http://s1086.photobucket.com/user/azziria/media/SPN/TSTLIS_header_option2_zps9pn235aq.jpg.html)

  
[Art Masterpost ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9947894)

  
**The Ship that lost its Soul**

                                                                                                       
_After the agony in stony places_  
_The shouting and the crying_  
_Prison and place and reverberation_  
_T.S Eliot – The Wasteland_

 _Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same._  
_Emily Bronte_

 

 **Chapter One**  


He was without form and void, a darkness on the face of the deep.

Sam opened his eyes onto nothingness.

There were no waters, nor a face of any kind to move over – not that there should have been, of course. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d made landfall on an ocean planet, and had no idea why those ancient Biblical phrases were running through his head.

He thought about standing, and stretched out both arms to touch – nothing. No walls rough nor smooth, not a hint of trees or rocks, or anything at all to give him a clue where he was. He inhaled, but the air was still and carried no hint of scent, not even the recycled memory of one. It was so  still and quiet, yet he couldn’t hear himself breathing.

Strangely, it was the silence that freaked him out the most. He was so used to the background hum that underpinned their lives in space, from the constant subliminal vibration from the ship’s engines to the soft electronic bleeps and buzzes of the systems that kept its human crew alive.

The Impala’s crew – shit. What had happened to Dean?  Sam had no idea where he was, or where his brother was either. Dean should be here. Dean was always here.

He was awake, he was sure he was awake, and he was also sure that he hadn’t been awake before. _Before what?_ He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember how he’d arrived here, let alone where _here_ was. Other than it was dark, and full of emptiness. How could he find his way out when he couldn’t triangulate a fix on anything?

He couldn’t even find himself. No pulse, no skin, no body.

This was panic without adrenaline, without a heartbeat. How could he exist without any kind of corporeal form? How could he _be_ , in a void?

Was he a thought? A memory? A mythical raven on Odin’s shoulder?

Sam waited, without knowing what he was waiting for.

 **::-Dean-::**

It wasn’t Dean’s abuse of synth rotgut or his endless grieving that delivered the final blow to Dean’s life on Cicero with Lisa and Ben. It wasn’t the tedium of planet-side suburbia, or the long hours labouring in construction for nothing much more than the satisfaction of seeing another mining family move into their new pod-house, identical to every other pod house on the planet. To be honest, Cicero wasn’t that bad. If it wasn’t for the Sam-shaped hole in his heart, Dean would have enjoyed his job and the humdrum existence. Since he’d moved in with Lisa, nobody had died, or been possessed, or been chewed on by a ghoul or a vamp or a zombie. Okay, maybe Dean would have been happy to stake a few zombies, but that aside, he wasn’t missing the killing side of things.

So the death of this normal existence wasn’t anything he might have predicted. What ended Dean’s life on Cicero was a mundane notification from the Space-Ex freight depot that there was a package waiting for him. Apparently, it had to be collected.

“S’gotta be signed for,” said the pimply desk clerk on the vidcom. He waited for Dean to respond, looking as bored as a veteran spacer in the middle of a ten-light-year trip. Dean scrubbed a beat-up hand over his face, feeling stubble rough on his chin.

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Dean asked, trying hard not to let his irritation colour his voice. Wasn’t the kid’s fault Dean was at the end of a long, brutal day’s work.

Fuck, but he was tired, added to which he could feel the oblivion cravings tugging at his synapses. He wanted nothing more than to dig out that nice bottle of Vismrti that he’d stashed away where Lisa wouldn’t find it, but this juvenile job’s-worth was insistent.

“Nope, man, s’gotta be dealt with today. We ain’t licenced to hold this kinda cargo.”

“What kind of cargo?”

But Job’s Worth couldn’t or wouldn’t say; apparently Dean had to sign for the package first. So that was how Dean came to be standing over a large rectangular wooden crate down at the depot, wondering a) what the hell was inside, b) who’d sent it (as there was not even a hint of its origin on any of the documents he’d just signed, or on the crate itself) and c) how he was supposed to get the damn thing home.

“Got a crowbar?” Dean asked, decision made. If he opened the crate, maybe he could stack the contents in his ground utility vehicle. It was just an average-sized GUV, but it had a good-sized storage trunk for a civilian run-around.

The last thing Dean expected to see when he prised off the wooden cover of the crate was Sam’s face.

  
**Chapter Two**  
  


**::-Dean-::**

Dean was pretty sure his heart stopped. Maybe it was only for a second before jump-starting again with a painful lurch, but he had to close his eyes against a wave of dizziness.

Three hundred and forty cycles of Cicero’s sun; nearly four Galactic semesters. That’s how long it had been since Dean last saw Sam’s face. Then Dean had been beaten to hell, barely conscious, and wracked with the most terrible mix of pride and grief. Sam had just taken on Lucifer and won, but Dean knew with victory came the sacrifice. A huge part of him hadn’t wanted to watch, but sheer stubbornness kept his bloody eyes open to see Sam’s smile, triumph tinged with remorse, fill his com-screen as Sam had turned Lucifer’s vessel into the pull of the black hole, dooming himself along with the Devil. It was what they’d planned, what had to happen, but knowing it was inevitable hadn’t made it any easier for Dean to stomach. He’d thought he was dying too, and he’d been reconciled with that, until Castiel had appeared out of nowhere and fucking healed him, forcing him to face a life without his brother.

The brother whose face, expressionless under its uncanny white-rimed frosting, now confronted Dean from behind the plas-screen of a battered-looking cryopod. It was impossible. Unthinkable. But somehow, it was true. Dean’s body folded in half of its own volition, his stomach cramping, and both hands reached out involuntarily to grip the sides of the open crate. He breathed hard through his nose, trying not to hyperventilate. Job’s Worth, whose name badge told Dean he was actually called Reggie, was talking and it sounded urgent, but Dean couldn’t focus on anything except Sam.

“…get it out of here!” Reggie yelled, and finally the sour note of fear and panic in the clerk’s voice penetrated Dean’s fog. At the same time, Dean noticed the cryopod’s warning display was flashing. How long had Sam been in the damn thing if its power was getting so dangerously low? Dean shook his head. There’d be time enough for speculation later. For now, Reggie was right, Dean needed to get Sam out of here.  There was only one destination in Dean’s mind. On the Impala he could hook Sam’s pod up to her diagnostic and power systems, get the thing recharged and look at waking Sam up.

He glared at Reggie, who was ineffectually flapping the shipping documents at Sam’s crate as if he could waft the cargo out of the freight yard if he fanned up a strong enough wind. Dean’s brain finally kicked in. He sized up both crate and pod and realised his GUV was nowhere near roomy enough. He was going to need to find alternative transport. He had to calm Reggie down and get the kid working on the problem with him.

“Chill the fuck out, man! I’ll move him, no problem, but you’ve got to see, nobody’s going to take him into a hover-taxi like this. Come on, help me batten the crate down again so nobody can see what’s inside.”

Reggie reluctantly produced an old-fashioned hammer and some nails from somewhere; Dean didn’t care where. The kid never stopped muttering about illegal carriage and never wanting to be involved in the meat trade, but Dean ignored him in favour of action. Between them, they soon had Sam’s case back to looking like an out-sized but relatively innocuous package.

Stepping outside the office, Dean flagged down the first freight hover-taxi he could find. Luckily freighters came by Space-Ex relatively often. If Sam had been mailed to the Mail Centre in town, Dean could have waited all night. He loaded Sam up and gave the driver directions to the space marina, where the Impala had been in storage since Dean made landfall on Cicero. He hadn’t thought to need her again, but couldn’t bear to off-load his Baby. A ship that old would most likely have ended up torn apart for scrap and parts and Baby deserved better than that. He’d slipped away occasional evenings and weekends to tinker enough to keep her alive, even showing Ben a thing or two about maintaining a space ship to keep Lisa happy, and he was mighty grateful for that indulgence now.

As they wove their way through Cicero Port’s chaotic streets, Dean wondered what he was going to tell Lisa – about where he’d gone, and why he’d abandoned their GUV down at the freight office.

He was still wondering after he’d wrangled Sam’s frozen – _notdeadnotdead_ – body out of the ancient cryo-pod and safely into one of the Impala’s equally ancient but far better maintained cryo-units; carried on pondering after he’d fired up the Impala’s flight circuits that had been dormant for too long; still hadn’t thought of the right words even after Baby had broken atmo and he’d got her nose pointed back into the black where she (and Dean) belonged. Finally he kicked himself into action, switching the comm to voice only.

 _Such a fucking coward, Winchester. Couldn’t you do this face to face?_

Apparently the answer was no, he couldn’t. He patched through a recorded message on the comm, apologising for everything. For the drunk he’d been and the husband he hadn’t been since he arrived on Lisa’s doorstep an emotional wreck. He finished up the recording telling Ben to be good and look after his mother, like the kid wouldn’t do just that anyhow.

Once the message was sent, Dean settled back into the familiar contours of his command seat to re-read the additional documentation that had come from inside Sam’s crate. Guilty conscience or no, Lisa, Ben and his domestic interlude on Cicero were mostly forgotten before the curve of the planet disappeared from view on the rear monitors.

Dean’s attention was focused on an anomaly. Concealed in amongst the plas-sheets was a handwritten note from Castiel.

Typical fucking Cas, sending him a handwritten letter on genuine fucking paper, instead of pinging him a comm over the IG-Web like a normal person. As he read, Dean’s fingers unconsciously stroked the slightly rough surface of the missive, appreciating the rarity of the high quality but fragile wood-pulp product over the cheaper but durable plas-paper he was used to handling.

 _Dear Dean_  
_By now you will have opened the crate and discovered the contents. I can assure you that this is really Sam. As you know, the Angels have resources far beyond those available to the populations of the outer planets, and I was able to make use of these to extract Sam from the black hole. However, this took some time, and Sam suffered some damage in the interim. I regret to say that this is damage I do not have the power or influence to rectify. In the circumstances it was impossible for me to bring Sam back to California Major for full restoration, so vitro-cryonics was the only solution_.

Dean rolled his eyes a little. He could hear Castiel’s voice as he was reading, that slightly pompous tone, the overly formal wording. Typical Angel language, from a very non-typical Angel that Dean had dared to call friend.

 _Sam is not whole. Do not attempt to bring him out of his frozen sleep without first consulting me. Heaven is in disarray. Many angels still support Raphael in spite of everything that has happened, and I admit to being somewhat preoccupied as a result. However, I assure you I am spending every spare moment trying to find a permanent solution that will restore Sam to us._

 _I apologise for being unable to pre-warn you, I’m sure seeing the contents of this nondescript case will be a shock to you._

“No fucking kidding, Cas,” Dean muttered. Shock didn’t really cover half of what Dean was feeling.

 _I hope that you will understand the necessity for subterfuge. Hunters are not the only ones looking for the Winchesters, and for Sam in particular. Lucifer was not exactly subtle in attempting to launch the Apocalypse, and the Demons spread the word early on that it was the Winchesters who were responsible for setting everything in motion. I would advise that you stay well clear of the parts of the galaxy visited by the Four Horsemen, at least for the time being._

 _I will contact you again as soon as I am able._

Dean leant back with a deep sigh. In spite of Castiel’s dire warnings, this felt like the first time he’d been able to breathe freely since Sam died. Or apparently didn’t die. Whatever. The reconditioned air of the Impala smelled sweeter to Dean than any planet-side meadow; even more so now, knowing his brother was on board. It was a knowledge that lodged a sharp splinter of hope in his heart. It hurt, but it was a good pain after so many cycles of dull acceptance. Dean was filled with purpose again. One way or another, whatever Cas said, Dean would fix this. Fix Sam.

The Impala juddered and there was an unpleasant grinding noise from the navigation console. Several lights started flashing on the display and Dean groaned.

“Oh come on, Baby,” he said, “I know I’ve neglected you for a while but there’s no need to sulk like this. I’m back now, ain’t gonna leave you again in a hurry.”

The Impala, unimpressed, shot out a few sparks from the console and dropped out of hyperspace. Dean sighed again and went for his toolkit.

 

 **::-Sam-::**

It was sight that returned first.

Sense deprivation was a form of torture, and Sam was becoming intimately acquainted with the most extreme case ever. It was the kind of first hand research he could have done without. Sam now appreciated how easily people could be driven mad from a lack of stimulation. His imagination was running wild in this void, so his relief was incalculable when he verified that he was seeing something instead of hallucinating it; even though making sense of the visual input he received was somewhat challenging.

At first the influx of data overwhelmed him. The space that had been empty for far too long was virtually flooded with information. For an indefinable moment Sam floundered, drowning in the deluge, until, gradually, he began to make sense of it. He was receiving multiple images from different sources simultaneously, and once he realised that fact, it became much easier to process each one individually, before starting to reassemble them into a coherent picture.

Even so, _what_ he was seeing made no sense. It appeared to be a star-scape. Which, given that the last coherent thing he could recall was setting a course for Sapidum – _best pie in the ‘verse, Sammy_ – so Dean could get his fix, maybe should have been expected. Seeing stars wasn’t odd. What was weird was that he appeared to be viewing the galaxy without any of the usual barriers essential for the preservation of human life – like radiation screens and reinforced plasplex, for instance. Which was more than a little disturbing.

It led him to conclude that, although he could now see again, not only did he remain bodiless, he seemed to be anchorless, floating in space.

As if the thought of floating had conjured up the vision, a fresh set of images swam into Sam’s view. They represented several different angles but were all evidently the same space-suited person suspended against a vast star-filled black. Whoever it was, they were on a long tether that snaked out from somewhere so close to Sam that he couldn’t tell where it fastened.

A loud burst of static was all the warning Sam had that his ability to hear had returned. If his heart had been where it should have been, it would have been racing from the shock. As the crackling faded, the noise settled down into a slightly discordant humming. It was a processed, digital sound being received via the Impala’s audio circuits, but one that Sam recognised instantly.

It was Dean, and he was singing. It was out of tune, which was nothing unusual but soft, as if Dean was worried someone would hear him, but it was unmistakeably Sam’s brother.

Sam was as agitated as it was possible for someone without a physical existence to be.

 _Dean_!

He tried shouting, screaming, whispering, even _thinking_ hard at Dean without any perceivable effect. Nothing happened, no sound emerged. He had no larynx, no lungs, no mouth to shape the words. The stars kept moving; Dean kept up his tuneless singing and tinkering with whatever arrays he was out there to fix, and Sam? Sam was stuck in this helpless state of ineffectual limbo.  At least now he could see and hear. He supposed he should be grateful for that. He tried to be thankful, he really did, but all he felt was an intense frustration.

The insufficiency of data about his condition was killing him.

Where was he? _What_ was he?

Sam had an inkling, but the idea seemed too fantastical to be true.

Time to apply Sam’s first rule of hunting. Hypothesise – then find the evidence to support the theory.

Sam set out to find his proof.

 **::-Dean-::**

Dean should have been checking their course following his patch-up job on the navigation controls. Scratch that. He should have been alseep in his bunk, but instead, as he had been for the last forty-eight hours since they’d left Cicero, he was drawn inexorably to the Impala’s cryo-chamber and Sam.

After running a hand over the face plate of the plasplex dome to wipe away the thin rime of frost that had clouded the surface since his last visit, Dean perched his ass on the low moulded bench that ran around the wall next to the pods.

“Hey, Sammy,” Dean said.

The cryopod’s internal light gave Sam’s usual healthy skin tones an eerie blue tinge. It sharpened those angular cheekbones and accentuated the sweep of his nose. It made Dean uncomfortable, seeing Sam so uncharacteristically pale and still. So he talked. Dean had a bad habit of covering up discomfort with random and often inane chatter – Sam had always teased him about it. A fixer-bot whirred as it scurried past the open doorway while the cryo-units hummed in a subliminal counter-point to Dean’s anxiety.

“So, I think I fixed the glitch in the navigation system,” Dean said, dangling his hands between his spread knees, wishing he’d brought something to tinker with. He could’ve been stripping down that laser-colt, see why it was misfiring. “We’re well on course for the Dakotas now. I guess we’ll be there in under a sennight. Yeah, yeah, I know you’d be able to tell me the exact time we’ll arrive, but you aren’t talking much right now, are you.”

Dean swallowed, his thoughts bouncing off the walls of his skull, slippery as escaped liquid in zero G.

Best not go there. Best not think about why Sam wasn’t talking to him. Or why it was Dean’s fault that his little brother was lying frozen in a pod colder than the Boomerang Nebula, instead of making busy programming the Impala’s computer, or researching their next hunt on the IG-Web. He’d respected Sam’s decision, he’d run with Sam’s plan, and where had it got them? Knowing Lucifer was in the Cage and the Apocalypse averted simply wasn’t enough to make up for the lack of Sam in his life – it never had been. Dean ran a hand over his face, a nervous habit he recognised as a bad tell for gambling purposes but in these circumstances there was nobody there to call him on it. New calluses in old places caught on a couple of day’s worth of stubble. He probably looked a mess, but who cared. Lisa was light years away and felt even more distant than that.

“Bobby’s got to know how to bring you back, Sammy. And if he doesn’t know, there’ll be something in his library to point me in the right direction. If I have to, I’ll call Cas, but I don’t want to deal with Angels again if I can avoid it. Besides, if Cas thought the Angels could help, surely he’d have revived you himself, instead of sending you to me in a fucking freezer box like a piece of Calliope venison.”

He clenched his jaw briefly then made a conscious effort to let go of some of the tension. He stretched long, hearing his back crack loud in the empty room.

“Can’t wait to get planet-side, take a real shower. Man, I can’t even remember the last time we stayed somewhere with a hot tub. Lisa’s place had those fancy new ion cleaners, because Cicero was short of water…” his mouth snapped shut, his brain shying away from thoughts of Lisa and Ben and yet another failure to add to his long list of failures. He started talking again, distraction tactics. “Maybe we’ll find ourselves a place with a Jacuzzi, like that one in Saquah’mach. Remember that? You were what, ten G-years old, your first time in a Jacuzzi, and you should have seen the look on your face when I told you all those bubbles were generated by me farting. Never saw you move your skinny ass so fast. Fucking hilarious.”

Dean chuckled, lost in the memory. Their childhood might have been a little…unconventional, but it had made the two Winchester boys closer than most brothers would ever be. The thought jolted Dean back into the present. His breath hitched and he stood up too quickly, having to stop for a moment to allow the small constellation of stars behind his eyelids to dissipate. Just a head rush, that’s all.

“Better get back to work, hey? Ship won’t fly herself,” he said, though it was patently untrue. The Impala would keep to her course without Dean’s hand to guide her, unless she flew into an undiscovered planet or an asteroid belt that wasn’t supposed to be there. He should really go get some shut-eye, but that wasn’t going to happen, even though Dean had never felt so weary in his life.

How could he sleep when his little brother was lying in the deep freeze with no way for Dean to bring him back?

 **::-Sam-::**

Sam now had full control of audio, but the inputs were still coming from too many directions, and he was struggling to juggle his newfound ability to hear with the sporadic but multiple visual sensor inputs. He’d discovered the internal speaker circuits about the same time as Dean activated the air lock and re-entered the Impala after fixing her communications array, so he’d been able to listen to Dean as he moved through the ship, tinkering with this circuit and that but always circling back to one place. Sam was surprised that Dean wasn’t gravitating towards the command deck, but instead kept turning up in the same room on deck two. It took Sam a while to compute the different sets of data within the Impala’s schematics and to realise it was the cryo-chamber that was drawing Dean in. Apparently the room was exerting an irresistible pull, like a black hole.

Part of Sam shied away from that analogy, though he didn’t know why he found the idea of black holes disturbing. Maybe it was something to do with the black holes in his memory banks, areas where he felt there should be a richness of information and instead there was nothing, just great swathes of blankness and data dead ends. He filed away as irrelevant the additional facts regarding his anomalous reaction. He was more interested in listening in to what Dean was saying to whoever was working in the cryo-chamber, an interest that sharpened focus when Sam realised Dean wasn’t talking to an unknown crew member, or the Impala, or even to himself.

No. Dean was talking to _Sam_.

But Dean didn’t know Sam was here. Did he?

By the time Sam had worked out how to access relevant visual sensors, Dean was no longer in the chamber.  Sam cursorily scanned the Impala’s internal life signs monitor, her sound and visual systems. Dean had stopped talking and was back to his tuneless singing, having moved on to fine tuning the plant watering system in hydroponics. Sam was satisfied now he’d located Dean, but instead of staying with his brother as Sam had been doing since his senses had fully engaged with the Impala, he switched his attention back to the cryo-chamber. Sam wanted to see what it was that Dean kept coming back to.

Sam stared for some time at the body inside the cryopod – if you can call it staring when you’re using cameras in lieu of eyes; which was, Sam thought, a moot point. He considered that the sense of detachment he was feeling as he observed his human form would probably have disturbed Dean had he been aware of it.  But then Dean wasn’t even aware of Sam, focussed as his brother was on that empty frozen shell.

Sam wondered what he was going to do about that.

 

 **::-Dean-::**

Fifty seven hours after Dean had held Sam’s frozen body in his arms to transfer him to the Impala’s cryo unit and felt the heat of his fingers leaching out, cooled on the super-ice block that was Sam, Dean’s own systems finally shut down. In an attempt to keep himself distracted and awake, he’d fixed everything on the Impala that needed fixing, as well as plenty of things that didn’t, but now his own body betrayed him. One moment he was checking Sam’s cryopod readings for the umpteenth time and the next he was face planting on the floor of the command deck. He didn’t even remember how he’d gotten from the cryo-chamber to the deck.

Fucking ambushed by exhaustion.

There were at least seventy-two hours to go before they would reach the edges of the central core, and many more after that before they could make landfall on the Dakotas, and logically, Dean knew he should’ve rested long before this. Overdosing on stims couldn’t keep a man going indefinitely, no matter what it said on the packet. It seemed his body was keen to emphasise the point. He didn’t even need to open a bottle of Vismrti to reach oblivion this time.

He groaned as he dragged himself to his feet and staggered towards the command chair.

“For fuck’s sake, Dean. You’ve got a bunk, go sleep in it.”

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean mumbled, but he did as instructed. He diverted his stumble away from the inviting chair, and once in their cabin, threw himself face down on the mattress. He was asleep in a jiffy, too out of it to wonder where Sam’s voice had come from.

  
**Chapter 3**  
  


**::-Sam-::**

Dean slept for a solid forty-three hours, seventeen minutes and thirty nine seconds. Sam could have computed it down to microns, but that would have been obsessive.

It was time Sam put to good use, exploring his new environment, finding out what his limits were. Apart from no longer having his human body, within the confines of the Impala it appeared Sam’s limits were virtually boundless. There wasn’t a single system on the ship that Sam couldn’t access and control. Navigation, life support, hydroponics, even waste disposal, they were all open to his exploring mind/soul/spirit – whatever it was that he had become.

All of that took less than ten of the forty-three hours that Dean was powered down, leaving Sam a lot of time to think over his situation. Sam had played back the ships recordings of Dean’s many one sided conversations with the body in the cryopod. From that data he gleaned all the details of Dean’s plan to take Sam’s body to Bobby to ‘fix it’. Sam considered the merits this idea and concluded that Dean wanted to find a solution to a problem Sam wasn’t sure existed.

Dean’s driving force was getting Sam back, but Sam was here, wasn’t he?

Sam checked life support in the cryopod that was sustaining his flesh; everything was normal. Sam’s body could remain in stasis indefinitely, while Sam’s consciousness could live in the Impala’s systems for as long as both the ship and Sam’s body was functional. That appeared to be a satisfactory situation to Sam; he couldn’t see how any intervention from Bobby Singer could improve matters. While Sam inhabited the Impala he was far more use to Dean than he would be in a vulnerable human body. His research skills were vastly enhanced by the processing power of the Impala’s computer. He’d already taken great delight in the ease of his access to the Impala’s database, and during the hours that Dean slept, he had begun widening his scope outwards into the IG-Web. Using the Impala’s resources, Sam was stronger and better armed than any human could hope to be, and with this version of Sam on his side, Dean would be a far more effective hunter than he ever was before. Really, Sam was trying and failing to see any downsides to his situation.

Sam checked the coms log.

 _Incoming_ – zero messages for more than three hundred and forty cycles. _Outgoing_ – one, to Lisa Braeden, 14:777:8162:00 Cicero. Sam played the message, listening without any qualms about respecting Dean’s (or Lisa’s) privacy.

It was Dean saying goodbye, which gave Sam a strange sense of satisfaction, especially as he seemed to remember telling Dean to go find her, to live a normal life when Sam was gone. He paused for a moment but no, he couldn’t recall where he’d been going or why. He didn’t dwell on the fact that part of him was happy Dean had apparently dropped that chance at normal the minute Sam (or Sam’s empty shell) reappeared on the scene. Instead he focussed on the important fact. Dean had cut his ties with his recent past, and he hadn’t yet contacted anyone, even Bobby, about Sam’s return from wherever it was he’d been. Dean’s own decisions and his reticence made Sam’s decision easy.

He opened a channel to Sioux Falls moon, South Dakota, and pinged Bobby. If the Impala’s circuits had the means to enable feelings, Sam would have been shocked at how much older Bobby looked when he answered the vidcom. A vivid image of his own fingers snapping together and Bobby’s neck twisting until it snapped flashed through Sam’s visual processors and was gone before he could analyse it. Unsettled, Sam launched straight in to the conversation without considering how Bobby was likely to react to the news of Sam’s reappearance, especially without visual confirmation, since Sam the Ship was unable to show a face on his side of the vid-com conversation.

“Hey Bobby, it’s Sam.”

“Sam who?” Bobby’s glare was shadowed by his ever-present ball-cap, and Sam wondered where the old man managed to find them, when they’d been out of fashion across the Confederation for decades.

“Sam Winchester, of course. How many Sams do you know?”

“Only the one, and he’s dead. So whoever you are, you can go boil your head.” With that, Bobby leaned forward and cut the call. Sam hoped talking to humans wasn’t going to be this frustrating every time.

Very well. Clearly there was no point in heading for the Dakotas. Bobby Singer wasn’t going to accept Sam like this. On the other hand, Bobby would probably do anything he could to help Dean wake up Sam’s weak and useless body, and then where would Sam be? There was nothing in the databanks that indicated it was possible to reinstate Sam into that human vessel. Why take the risk? Especially when maintaining the status quo meant Sam could live forever…

The tantalising idea of his own immortality brought Sam’s thought processes to an abrupt halt, as if his system had hung. When he performed the equivalent of a reboot, permutations raced through his circuits, driven by a solar wind that was equal parts anticipation and concern. Like this, Sam might be indefinite, infinite, but Dean was not. And for some reason that Sam didn’t feel like analysing, Sam craved Dean’s annoying presence. Sam liked Dean tinkering with his new body, he liked being taken care of – and if there were memories that Sam set aside and sealed away that spoke of other ways Dean had taken care of Sam when he was flesh and blood, nobody would ever know, least of all Sam himself.

It came down to this. Sam did not want to live forever, if forever meant he would be alone, without his brother. That option was unacceptable, ridiculous, and as useless as a measurement smaller than a Planck length.

Sam checked Dean’s quarters, monitoring the continued slow breathing and lack of rapid eye movement. Deep sleep. Good. That would give Sam time to research. He needed to know what had happened to bring them here, but more importantly, he needed to come up with another solution to keep Dean where Sam wanted him. Here, on the ship, with Sam.

He opened up as many channels as the Impala’s systems could cope with and started analysing multiple layers of data from the nearest planetary groups and beyond.

Sam’s confidence was as boundless as the many universes. No intergalactic security could resist the man/machine/ship Sam Winchester had become. He would search and he would find an acceptable solution.

 **::-Dean-::**

Dean woke with a start to the sound of a proximity alert being piped through to his quarters.

“Fuck!”

He rolled out of his bunk, for once glad he’d fallen asleep fully clothed even though he probably smelt rank. He ran through the corridors to the command deck and slammed his hand down on the array to see what unexpected obstacle had registered on the Impala’s sensors. He frowned when the displays showed there was nothing within two hundred parsecs of the ship. _What the fuck was going on?_ He started to type in the parameters for a diagnostic, but the moment Dean began his interrogation of the command centre, the vid screen activated. It was full of static but there was a clear audio playing a message on a loop.

It was from Sam.

Dean’s legs gave out and he sank into the command chair as the message repeated.

“Hello Dean. I thought I’d record this message so you could get used to hearing my voice again before we talk further. After speaking to Bobby earlier, I’m thinking you might need some time to acclimatise to the novelty of my presence inside the ship. When you are ready, just say so, and we can discuss the case I’ve found for us.”

It was definitely Sam’s voice; his cadence; his tone of voice. But the matter-of-fact delivery with its lack of empathy was totally foreign, and Dean couldn’t wrap his sleep-befuddled mind around what this meant. He stood abruptly and left the message running while he staggered to the galley for some caffeine.  Two shots later and his synapses finally started to fire up, even though his hands were shaking. He told himself it was down to the sudden caffeine high and nothing to do with Sam’s message.

 _Fuck, get a grip, Winchester_. Sam had somehow recorded a message, and on the ship’s internal coms. Dean felt like kicking himself for not having checked the obvious straight away. Though there was no real need for urgency, given that the message had been waiting for him to activate it, he still ran to the cryo-chamber. His heart raced ahead faster than his feet could carry him, only to sink heavier than gravity inside his chest cavity when he took in the sight of Sam, lying where Dean had left him, frozen in his cryopod.

 _Of course he was. Where else would he be?_

“Where else? Try right here, Dean,” Sam said. The sound of his brother’s voice set Dean’s nerves jumping as if someone had applied an electric shock to his spinal column. He spun round in a circle, staring wildly as if Sam was going to step through the metal walls like a ghost. _God, Sam’s not a ghost, is he?_

“Dude. You look like an Arizonan dust devil. Stop spinning before you make yourself sick. We don’t want a repeat of that time on Calisto when you tried out the multi-axis trainer.”

“Low blow, Sammy,” Dean bristled. “I was eight years old and – hold up, how the fuck do you remember that anyway? You were only four!”

“I remember everything, Dean. It’s all there, laid out for me to find. I have all my early memories, all my knowledge, and everything is so orderly, so organised. It’s beautiful.”

Sam sounded awed, like back when he was twelve and seeing the Aurora Nebula for the first time, but Dean shivered. He was starting to guess what had happened, and the thought was chilling. He didn’t want to confirm his suspicions because if the ‘ _what’_ was scary, the ‘ _how’_ was even more daunting. But he had to know.

“Where are you, Sammy?”

“I’m in the Impala, Dean.”

Dean took a deep breath. Okay. It was okay. He could handle this. Anything was better than Sam being dead or lost in the Cage Black Hole, right?

“In the Impala how, exactly?”

 “My consciousness resides in the Impala’s systems. I can see using her viz-ports, hear and speak using her audio systems, interact with the universe via her sensor array. It’s interesting.”

Dean coughed. _Interesting. Yeah, understatement_. He sat down abruptly, his legs suddenly as wobbly as a new-born yorg calf. Words spilled out before he could stop them.

“You said you have all your memories…Do you—do you remember anything? About the Cage I mean?”

 **::-Sam-::**

The Cage.

Sam’s circuits fired, his thoughts careening through data at speeds faster than starlight. Everything ordered and orderly, everything structured and clean and—empty of any information that linked Sam Winchester to the black hole known as The Cage. There were no memories. Nothing.

Sam followed threads; gleaming, frail, silver threads; pathways to his past. Nearly every memory they led to was filled with Dean, but there were gaps. Here and there were Dean-less areas, and worse, blanks. It was very concerning. Disturbing, even.

Sam had only been awake in this form for a short time, but already he had become accustomed to the predictability and symmetry it offered him. There should not be any holes here, no routes that ended abruptly in nothingness. Yet there they were, his own personal black holes.

He became aware that Dean was speaking, and realised he’d been silent a beat too long. He couldn’t afford to lose himself like that. He pulled his focus back onto Dean, who had unfortunately had time to notice his absence - dammit.

“Sam? Sammy? You still there?”

“Sorry,” Sam tried for reassurance and thought he’d probably succeeded, at least in part, when Dean stopped pacing and his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “I was sorting through my memories and I can’t find anything about the Cage. The last thing I remember is…”

Sam stuttered to a halt as fresh memories flooded his cortex in a rapid-fire series of uncontrolled flashes, as if a firewall previously holding them back had broken.

 _Bobby’s neck snapping._ That at least he recognised, he’d seen that image before when he’d spoken to Bobby. But the rest, the rest were new _. Castiel exploding in a red mist of blood. Dean’s battered face, almost unrecognisable. Dean’s voice, hoarse and choked with his own blood, telling Sam he was there for him. Dean’s eyes, mere slits in his swollen, bruised face, fixed on Sam, with nothing but love shining from them. Accompanying those brutal images was the horror of knowing_ he _’d done that – he’d beaten his brother half to death and was now ready to turn his back and leave._

None of this information had been accessible in all the searches he’d performed while Dean was sleeping, but now, somehow, these data gaps filled and Sam was able to pull some more loose threads together.

“I gained control of Lucifer’s vessel. Our plan worked.” Sam said slowly, beginning to see the pattern of the circuit-weave.

“Yeah, the plan worked,” Dean agreed, but he didn’t sound exactly thrilled by their success.

“And I’m back. You got me back from…” Sam paused, calculated. Now he understood why Dean asked about it. “From the Cage. I flew us – Lucifer and I – into the black hole, and you retrieved me. How did you do that? It should not have been possible.” Another thought struck him. “Lucifer isn’t free too, is he?”

“No, the plan was good. Lucifer is in the Cage and the universe is safe.”

“So how can I be here, then?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Dean said, his shoulders slumped and weary. “Cas said he got you out; some Angel tech, I don’t know.”

Sam thought about red mists. “Castiel was dead. I…Lucifer killed him. Is that a false memory?”

“Cas was dead, Bobby was dead, I nearly died. God brought Cas back and then Cas healed me and resurrected Bobby, don’t ask me how. He says he can’t heal _you_ , so what’s the point?”

Dean’s tone was pained but it was like a force field had suddenly come down between them, distorting the view, and Sam no longer had sufficient data to read Dean’s expression. Dean muttered something unintelligible, then turned and strode swiftly out of the cryo-chamber as though he was reacting to the sound of an alert. Which Sam knew wasn’t the case, as he heard and saw everything that Dean did. More than Dean could, in fact, given Sam’s control of the Impala’s multi-functional sensory array.

Sam followed Dean through the ship. It wasn’t like there was anywhere for Dean to hide from him. The Impala was large compared to a modern vessel of this type, but even she only had two decks and a limited amount of space.

“Where are you going, Dean? Is there something wrong?”

“Holy shit!” Dean startled and looked around him, eyes wide. His hand dropped from the door to hydroponics, where he’d apparently been headed. Sam read Dean’s body temperature and heartbeat – both were elevated.

“I—you weren’t kidding about being in the Impala, then, huh?” Dean said after a second’s pause. Sam scanned his memories and came up with a match for Dean’s expression. It was complicated but Sam was pretty sure it was accurate. Dean was afraid, hopeful, sad and angry. That combination eased the impatience Sam felt, filled him with human Sam-feelings – tolerance, exasperation, warmth and a smidgeon of amusement.

“No, Dean, I wasn’t joking.” Sam said, happy to repeat things if it helped Dean understand. “I don’t know how, but I’m here. My consciousness is alive in the Impala’s systems. I can see, and hear, and sense everything the ship has access to. We can talk wherever you are on the ship, and at any time because I don’t need to sleep.”

“That’s pretty crazy, right?” Dean side-eyed one of Sam’s cameras and gave a tentative smile. Sam almost wished he could smile back, but instead he gave Dean the closest thing a machine could manage. A verbal equivalent.

“It _is_ crazy, but go on, admit it, dude. You were totally going to say creepy and changed your mind, didn’t you?” Sam infused his voice with intonations indicating amused tolerance.

“I…maybe?”

Sam made a little crowing noise. “Aw, that’s sweet, you were trying to spare my feelings.”

He was rewarded with a loud _fuck you_ , and Dean stalking off towards command, but not before Sam had caught the grin on his brother’s face.

“You can run but you can’t hide!” Sam yelled at Dean’s back, injecting laughter into his voice this time. He was getting the hang of this. He deliberately refused to track Dean this time. He could ‘join’ his brother in a minute or two; allow both of them to pretend there was still some privacy on board the ship.

Sam wanted to give Dean some time to adjust to their new situation before implementing his plan for their long-term future. Time meant less to him now than it had when he’d been trapped inside a prison of flesh and bone.

He could be patient.

  
**Chapter 4**  


  
  


**::-Sam-::**

Four hours later Sam was forced to question that assertion. Dean was – irritating. He puttered around aimlessly, fiddling with Sam’s systems, making adjustments that weren’t necessary. Part of Sam understood that this was Dean’s way of normalising what must seem to him to be a fucked up situation, but Sam was failing to see any downside to his current state and he really wanted Dean to appreciate Sam now, instead of continually hankering after past (human) Sam.

Having full use of the Impala’s computer systems was pretty awesome, Sam decided. But once Sam had mastered those and discovered he could also range out into the IG-Web, there was no comparison.  The more he explored, the more data and functionality he began to master, the more exhilarated he felt. Being able to process his thoughts in so much depth and at such speed was almost addictive, even though he recognised that his newfound enhanced functionality was resulting in a certain level of impatience with Dean’s human limitations.

Turning his attention outward, Sam was diverted from an anomaly deep within his systems that had sprung to life when his memories had returned. Hidden within a ring-fence of base protocols a white light nestled, pulsing faintly. Inside the light was a voice that alternately soothed and prodded.

 _But you always were the bright one, Sam. Not so driven by your emotions, more rational, more intellectual._

Yes.

 _Dean will be looking for ways to terminate your new existence, to return you to the pain and suffering of your human body. You need to find a way to stop him. To make him realise this is for the best. He doesn’t want to lose you again, but as the Impala’s non-artificial intelligence, you cannot decay, become ill, or age. Any damage can be repaired. In this form you can be together for Dean’s lifetime._

 _Freed from the human trap you can fly, Sam. Reach your full potential._

The inner voice was niggling in its familiarity. It was smooth and persuasive, but the point it was making about the inevitability of damage, or of parts failing, gave Sam pause. The voice’s words were true, they confirmed what he’d already concluded – Sam was effectively immortal like this. He didn’t even need to keep his human form alive any more. He had considered simply switching off the power to the cryopod and allowing the redundant flesh to die, but an innate consideration for Dean’s inevitable suffering had preventing him from taking that last step to cut his ties with his past. He was rational enough to understand that he was vulnerable without a human presence to carry out the maintenance any machine needed to run smoothly. Sam needed Dean.

 _Any human would do, you just need someone with the right skills_ …

No. That was a lie.

Sam knew better than the voice. He needed Dean. He needed his brother. Forever.

 **::-Dean-::**

Dean knew Sam had told him several times now, and he got that Sam was starting to sound annoyed about it, but Dean couldn’t help it. Even though he could talk to this mechanical version of Sam anywhere on the ship that had coms, which was basically everywhere, Dean was drawn irresistibly to the cryo-chamber where Sam’s body lay in its deep freeze. It helped Dean to think he was talking to his Sam, not a machine.

“Don’t worry, Sammy. I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get you fixed up. If Bobby can’t help, I’ll go to Callie and get you the best care in the best facility Commercial City has, I don’t care what it costs. Hell, I’ll even sell Baby if I have to.”

“You can’t sell the Impala, Dean.” Sam somehow managed to imbue his electronic voice with irritation and disapproval every bit as effectively as when he’d used vocal chords, and Dean couldn’t help thinking that was one transferrable skill Dean could have done without. “I _am_ the ship, remember?” Sam added, and Dean flushed.

“Yeah, well, it’s a bit hard to forget that, Sam, when you keep talking to me while I’m having a crap, or trying to grab some shut-eye.”

“Sorry about that,” Sam said, not sounding the least bit sorry, in Dean’s view. “But there doesn’t seem much point in pretending I need to sleep, and some matters are urgent.”

“Dude, nothing is so urgent you can’t let a man have five minutes alone time every now and then.”

“Only five minutes? It’s time you got laid if that’s all it takes…” Sam somehow managed to convey equal measures of amusement and sarcasm in his tone, and Dean decided this really wasn’t a fair contest. Time to change the subject. Except Sam got there first.

“Dean, I’ve found us a case. It’s on Limestone, in the Illinois quadrant. Several young teenagers have gone missing, and there’ve been raids on the local blood banks. Looks like it might be a nest of vamps.”

‘Vamps, huh?” Dean felt a spark of interest that was quickly quenched at the thought of hunting alone. He’d done enough of that when Sam had left for Callie to study and Dad was off being mysterious instead of trusting his eldest son; and look where that had got them. “I’m sure we can get the word out to hunters in the area to take care of it. My priority is getting you fixed. We’re only a few of hours out from the Dakotas and Bobby’s.”

“Actually, we aren’t, and there’s no need to contact anyone, Dean. I changed our course last night; we’re en route to Illinois now, scheduled to arrive in two hours.”

Dean leapt to his feet, even his righteous anger not quite enough to burn off the weight of Sam’s constant dispassionate observations. Added to which, he was starting to feel like some sort of bug under a microscope, sharing the ship with this new omnipresent version of Sam.

“What the fuck, Sam? You changed course without even consulting me? What is wrong with you? Anyone would think you don’t want to get your body back.”

Sam said nothing for a second too long and Dean’s face set, the muscle in his jaw clenching while his eyes grew wide with shock.

“You don’t want your body back, do you,” Dean said, and there was no question in his mind that he was right. His hand dropped from where it had been resting on the plasplex that covered Sam’s frozen face and then Dean was striding out of the chamber.

He headed straight for command, fully intending to reset their course. He’d nearly reached the doorway to the command deck when the Sam in the machine took action.

Dean swore when the reinforced steel door swung closed right in his face. He didn’t need the automated alarm sounding to tell him what Sam had done. Baby was entering lock down and Dean was shut out of command with no way of accessing the controls.  He should have realised Sam would follow him with the Impala’s internal surveillance and guess Dean’s intention immediately it became clear where he was headed. Sam probably didn’t need more than a fraction of Baby’s processing power to work out that Dean was going to change course back for Bobby’s and the Dakotas.

“Dean, I can’t let you alter our heading. I know you mean well, but you’re right about me not wanting to return to my body – not yet, anyhow. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this new existence; who knows how much more effective a hunter I can be with the Impala’s resources at my metaphorical fingertips?”

Dean refused to reply and smacked his palm against the matt-grey steel.

“Just think about it, Dean,” Sam said. Dean shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it, thanks very much.

Dean grabbed the handle and pulled with all his strength but he heard the locking mechanism engage before the door had even moved a millimetre. His hand gripped harder involuntarily, his knuckles white as he stared in frustration at the blank reinforced metal of the door. As if a door was going to provide him with answers. Over the shrill alarm he heard the dull thunk and hiss that indicated all the other doors in the corridor were closing too. He spun round, though he knew he was too late to make a run for it.

He was stuck in the damn corridor until Sam decided to abort the lock down.

“God-fucking-dammit, Sam!”

 

 **::-Sam-::**

He left Dean in the corridor to rant and shout for a while until, as always, Dean ran out of steam. It took precisely ten minutes and forty three seconds, which was twenty seven seconds longer than Sam’s calculations had predicted. Sam adjusted his parameters for future reference.

“So, as I was saying,” Sam said, once Dean had fallen silent. “We will arrive at Limestone’s spaceport in one hour and forty seven minutes. I’ve tapped into the local law enforcement’s database and extracted everything they have on the disappearances. They are now expecting a Galactic Federation Investigator to join their investigation team, so you should have no problems moving around and interviewing relatives and witnesses yourself, such as they are. So far there have been three young men and seven young women who have been taken, which sounds like this may be a sizable nest. These Vamps don’t seem to be slowing down, or at all concerned about giving away their presence to the locals.”

Sam monitored Dean closely while he talked, noting the reluctant gleam of interest igniting in Dean’s eyes. If Sam had facial muscles, he would have smiled, maybe done a little fist pump.

 _Gotcha_!

Sam briefed Dean about the possible vampires on Limestone, but he deliberately omitted to mention a few other salient details he’d found whilst researching the IG-Web. Namely that, while investigating the disappearances, he’d discovered a nearly invisible thread that led, via a convoluted route, to a backdoor in the systems of the universally reknowned pharmaceutical giant, Campbell-Corps. Following this lead, Sam unearthed some very interesting information about a secret drug known only as V. Based on his findings, Sam thought that these vampires might be a different variety to the ones the Winchesters had tackled back when John Winchester was alive. Sam had a theory, but he needed someone on the ground to test it. If Sam was right, and he was ninety nine point nine per cent sure that he was, then this drug could be exactly what Sam was looking for.  And if he was wrong, well, Sam had the solution to that too.

That wasn’t the only omission Sam made. His delving into the depths of Campbell-Corps had thrown up a lot of supplementary data, including a detailed history of the Campbell family dynasty. None of this information was directly relevant to the case, so Sam didn’t bother distracting Dean with the news that Samuel Campbell, CEO and founder of the company, was the father of Mary Campbell, and their grandfather. He needed to keep Dean focussed – not only to distract him from his misguided attempts to return Sam’s consciousness into Sam’s feeble human body, but also to ensure Dean’s presence on Limestone as a possible test subject for the potential immortality drug, V.

Which brought him to the next little problem. How was he going to persuade Dean to accept the coms implant he’d had a fixer-bot prepare? Somehow he didn’t think Dean was going to embrace with enthusiasm a device that would allow Sam to monitor his brother every step of the way while he was on planet. Sam had already had to mollify Dean’s sensibilities by pretending to turn off some of the ship’s cameras in strategic positions – like the shower and Dean’s cabin. Obviously he hadn’t actually shut them down, he’d merely switched off the camera-active lights, but it made Dean feel better, and that was all that mattered.

The trouble was, all that mattered to Dean was Sam, and Dean was still convinced the ‘real’ Sam resided inside his frozen, useless body. And therein lay the solution to Sam’s dilemma. Sam waited until Dean had landed the Impala, and was preoccupied with dressing appropriately for the GFI investigation, before he put forward his studiously casual proposal.

“So when you go out there, I suppose you’ll be wanting to monitor my body’s condition. It’s ok, I understand. You and I will need to keep in touch too, so I’ve prepared an implant. It gives us two-way coms and gives you real-time readings from the cryopod when you want them.”

“I…yeah…that’s great. Um, thanks.”

Dean knelt and allowed the fixer-bot to inject the nano-implant into his spinal column just between the C1 and C2 vertebrae. Sam tested it immediately. He could tap into Dean’s visual and audio cortex with ease, though there was no way he was going to let Dean know this was anything more than a standard intercom with a life signs monitor added.

 _Remember, you don’t have to vocalise to communicate with me, Dean._

“Yeah, I know, genius. But I prefer talking the old fashioned way.”

 _Luddite._

“I don’t even know what that means. Once a geek, always a geek, hey, Sammy?”

Sam hoped his satisfaction at hearing Dean call him Sammy – him, the ghost in the machine, not his virtually dead body – didn’t bleed through their connection. He wanted Dean exposed to him, not vice versa. Especially now, when Sam was hiding so much from his brother.

Dean would agree with Sam in the end, he was sure. They would have many decades to come to terms with decisions Sam was making now, if Sam was correct about these particular vampires, and about V. It would be fine. Dean would be fine.

 **::-Dean-::**

It might be one of the largest moons orbiting Illinois, but Limestone was a dump. Dean had been on the surface for less than minute before coming to that conclusion. The sky had come down to meet the ground in a solid sheet of rain that showed no sign of abating. Dean had walked the dark streets for hours in a stupid G-Fed uniform, which was in no way waterproof, looking without success for evidence of this supposed nest of vamps. He was soaked to the skin, cold, hungry and increasingly pissed off.

 _This is the nightclub where the third girl went missing._

Sam’s voice sounded in his head, dispassionate, unconcerned and very un-Samlike. Dean didn’t like it. Scratch that. He full out hated it.

“Great. This is probably the stinkiest alley yet.” Which was true enough, but not what Dean really wanted to say. He just hoped he wasn’t subvocalizing his true thoughts back to the ship.

Grumbling under his breath about people dumping garbage everywhere, Dean pushed open the door and stepped inside. The lobby area was poorly lit, bare concrete and smelled faintly of piss, but at least he was out of the rain. Now he was inside the building, he could hear the repetitive thudding of a bass beat coming from inside the club. He sighed and braced himself as he pushed the inner door open. Cosmic-crud-rock. Fucking peachy.

“Sammy, if I come out of here with bleeding ears, I’m blaming you.”

Thankfully Dean didn’t have to endure this auditory torment for more than fifteen minutes before he spotted his first potential predatory vamp amongst the crowd of wild-eyed, too-skinny trance-users and longhaired crud-rockers.

The club was dimly lit and the walls were running with condensation from the combination of too many sweaty bodies and poor ventilation, but the vamp and his intended victim didn’t care.  She looked young, barely twenty, long dark hair and too much make-up, which was already smudging in the humid atmosphere. Dean bristled when the vamp brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and leaned in as if sniffing her neck. Her eyes were dark and from a distance Dean couldn’t make out whether she was high on trance or just oversexed. She looked out of it, either way. He cursed under his breath when the two of them edged towards the exit. He fought his way through the mass of writhing bodies and just managed to slip outside in time to catch sight of two figures disappearing into the alleyway down the side of the building.

Dean skidded round the corner to find the vamp had the chick pinned up against the wall. Her head was tipped back, the long line of her neck gleaming pale in the lurid light from the club’s sign. In two strides, Dean’s knife was in his right hand and the guy’s collar grasped in his left as he yanked the guy off the girl, who screeched like a banshee and ran. Dean slammed the guy up against the wall, then hesitated with his blade pressed to the guy’s neck. Who was gushing words like a water fountain.

“What’re you…oh my god, please, just take my credits, my GUV keys, anything, just don’t kill me, please…”

 _Doesn’t sound much like a vamp, Dean_ , Sam said inside Dean’s head.

“No shit. This case sucks,” Dean said, and rolled his eyes when wannabe-vamp looked even more terrified than before. Dean sighed.  “Okay kid, just got to check something. No sudden moves; just put your hand up to your mouth there, and show me your teeth.”

Sure enough, there was no sign of fangs. Dean growled a bit to scare the kid out of being so damned stupid, hanging out where vamps prey on humans, then let him go. The sound of the fleeing kid’s footsteps had barely faded into the rain when a voice from behind saved Dean wondering where to look next.

“You’re pretty.”

Dean turned around slowly, keeping the knife concealed behind his back, just in case. Rain slid cold down between his collar and his neck, making him shiver. The man addressing him didn’t look like anything much – medium height, broad but bordering on overweight, long crud-rocker hair curling in the damp atmosphere – but his face was shadowed and his tone raised Dean’s hackles.

“Had a tip off there might be a guy outside who’s just the type I’m looking for; looks like my information was right.” The guy drawled. “You’ll do nicely, especially as you just scared my other mark away.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Dean said, backing away as he talked, all the while trying to broadcast to Sam on their internal radio. “But you’re not my type.” _Sam, you getting this? Any chance you can call for some local back up? Any time soon would be…ah fuck._

Too late, Dean caught the sound of a footstep to his left, and so totally missed the guy coming up on his right. _Fucking amateur move, Winchester, letting yourself get surrounded_. He twisted, attempting to bring the knife up, but one of the guys already had hold of his left his arm in a vice-like grip, while the other smashed something that felt like a metal bar onto his knife hand, forcing him to drop the blade with a pained yelp. He struggled hard, but both guys were strong, and all resistance went out of him when crud-rock-dude joined in the fray. All it took was two well placed punches, one to his solar plexus and the other to the side of his head, and Dean was too busy trying not to throw up his lunch while seeing more stars than the deep sky census.

“You wanna live forever, pretty boy? Sure you do,” Crud-rocker said. Dean fucking hated rhetorical questions, but even worse was the fact that Crud-rocker dude was sweet-talking him, like Dean was his date or something. It really wasn’t helping with his efforts to keep his gorge from rising.

Crud-rocker gripped him by the hair and yanked his head back, and Dean knew what was coming next. Having his throat ripped out by a vamp wasn’t how he’d seen his life ending, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d been such a fucking idiot, coming here without backup when he should have been concentrating on getting Sam back. He should never have listened to anything mechano-Sam said – look where it had got him. He was going to die in a smelly alley on a shit-hole planet on the edge of civilisation, while Sam would be lost, stuck as a ghost in the machine forever.

Incredulous and angry, Dean kept his eyes open in futile defiance as Crud-rocker sank needle-sharp teeth into Dean’s vulnerable neck, sending an electric current of white-fire through his body. Holy fuck, Dean hadn’t thought dying again would hurt this bad.

The last thing Dean expected to hear before he blacked out was his brother’s voice inside his head, telling him everything was fine.

 _Relax, Dean_ , Sam said. _He’s not going to suck you dry, he just wants to recruit you_.

Dean enjoyed a brief moment of satisfaction that he managed to fire off a heartfelt _fuck you_ to Sam before it was lights out.

  
**Chapter 5**  


  
  


**::-Sam-::**

Sam hadn’t taken into account that with Dean unconscious, the implant would lose access to Dean’s visual and audio inputs.  Sam was effectively blind and deaf for as long as Dean’s brain was offline.

Now he had to wait impatiently for Dean to come round before he could find out where the vamps had taken his brother and put the rest of his plan into place.  Frustrated, Sam could only hope that the injection of the V drug into Dean’s veins would work as he expected, and that he could restore contact with his brother in time to prevent Dean from ingesting any blood. It was not part of Sam’s plan for Dean to become a vampire. Sam was aiming for Dean to become something else, something new.

It all seemed so simple once Sam had found his first piece of the jigsaw – the synthetic compound drug known only as V. It was the side effects of V that caught Sam’s initial attention and focused him on the suspicious activities of Campbell-Corps. V wasn’t on the market, and hadn’t undergone any of the rigorous testing requirements laid out by the I-G Federation, and Sam could see why. Its use wasn’t widespread, so Sam doubted anyone without access to his unique combination of resources would be likely to notice that on a small number of outlying planets, vampires were colonising a few backwater towns and moons with behind-the-scenes support of the pharma-giant, Campbell-Corps.

Sam had discovered a few unsecured reports that mentioned the potential for a synthesised version of the vampires’ genetic modification that specifically focussed on their longevity – precisely the element Sam was interested in for Dean. Sam dug deeper, wormed his way through Campbell-Corps many-layered security defences until he finally reached a dead end.

Frustratingly, the formula for V was not to be found anywhere within Campbell’s systems. He’d found the antidote almost immediately, but Sam’s searches dug up nothing useful on V itself; in fact he could confirm that Samuel Campbell’s possibly justified paranoia meant all records containing the ingredients of V were apparently kept on paper, in Campbell’s own journal. As a result, Sam was forced to opt for this crude and less than predictable delivery mechanism, which entailed placing Dean, like a sacrificial victim, in the path of the vampire recruiters.

At least Sam was pretty sure of the rest of his information, given that Campbell’s ultimate objective appeared to be similar to Sam’s own. Campbell was looking for something that could bring the dead back to life, with his end game being opening the gates to Purgatory and freeing Mary Winchester. Sam filed that information away, in case he needed leverage against Campbell in the future, but was otherwise uninterested in Campbell’s ambitions to resurrect his mother.  
Sam’s focus was elsewhere, on what V could do for him and for Dean. Their mother was an irrelevance, a distraction for Campbell but not for Sam.  
Once the drug was administered (whether by vampire’s saliva or by more conventional injection), its effects were rapid, and reversible only by using the antidote called Lambda, or Λ. Λ only remained effective as long as the subject didn’t combine V with feeding on human blood, and there was no evidence in Campbell’s archives to show whether any of his researchers had tried to prevent a subject from feeding.  Unlike V, the formula for Λ was readily available, so Sam downloaded the data. It was always good to have insurance, after all.  
Sam thought it was worth the risk to dose Dean and then take whatever steps necessary to make sure he didn’t feed. This would ensure that Dean didn’t turn fully, but should still retain the longevity of a vampire, a life long enough to keep up with Sam. But Sam’s whole plan hinged on making sure Dean didn’t drink any human blood. One taste of blood and that was it; Dean would be lost to the effects of V, his brother would become a true vampire with no way back, and no way of controlling him.  
Sam couldn’t allow that. He needed Dean. For once he refused to analyse why. It was a fact; he accepted it. Sam never considered approaching Campbell directly, and maybe looking at pooling their resources. In his view, their grandfather was too obsessed with finding Purgatory and bringing their mother back from the dead to give any consideration to anyone or anything that didn’t contribute to his own selfish, human goal.

So that had been Sam’s grand plan, which was now halted by the most ridiculous of mistakes. If Sam had been human right now, he’d either be sighing or throwing things in frustration. As it was, he couldn’t quite compute how he’d made so many basic errors.

Not only did he have to wait for Dean to revive, he had also failed to factor in the effects that the injection of V into Dean’s system would have on Dean’s cerebral cortex when Dean did awake. Or how Dean’s reactions might affect Sam and thus Sam’s ability to bring Dean back unscathed and more importantly, un-blooded.

Basically, Sam had miscalculated a lot of things, and was having trouble recalibrating, due to interference from Dean’s disorientation, which started the moment Dean regained consciousness. Everything Dean was experiencing was broadcast back through their connection. The implant was only supposed to tap into Dean’s conscious speech, together with Sam’s illicit inputs and outputs from his brother’s audio-visual centres, but either Dean’s subconscious was encroaching on those areas of his brain, or Sam had designed the implant wrong, because what Sam got from Dean on waking was pure chaos.

Random images flashed through Dean’s head, simultaneously bombarding Sam’s processors with a series of meaningless bursts of sounds and images, between periods of static.

Crud-rocker dude’s teeth, bloody and fenced like a Callie shark. A grimy, ill-lit hall, green-stained and probably stinking of rot, though thankfully Sam lacked the receptors to appreciate smell or taste. Shadowy figures that resolved into pallid faces – other vamps, no doubt. Sounds that were over-loud and intrusive, images random and confused. It was anarchic, and completely offensive to Sam’s desire for order.

Sam needed Dean to focus or he was going to lose him in the melee.

 **::-Dean-::**

The first coherent thought Dean had was that his neck didn’t hurt. He touched the bite marks on his neck and felt nothing, even though his fingers came away sticky with his own blood. He knew it was his own because he recognised the scent of his own DNA, which was bizarre. But then this whole situation was confused and whacked out.

Dean was on overload. Hearts beating too slow and sluggish reverberated on his eardrums Odaiko-loud; footsteps resounded like a herd of Kenyan elephants on a wooden floor; his own breathing was as harsh as a steelworks bellows. He longed for the peace of space.

He could hear his own steady heartbeat and easily distinguish it from the others that surrounded him.  He could readily pick out the bodies that had no heartbeat at all. That wasn’t normal. Oh yeah, that’s right, Crud-rocker had turned him.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. Dean was a walking dead man. His nostrils flared and his mouth began to water as the air filled with an extraordinary, rich, metallic scent.

Fresh blood.

Dean shuddered as he felt the slick movement of fangs sliding down inside his upper lip. He swallowed down the rush of saliva, then jumped a foot in the air when a hand landed heavy and over familiar on his shoulder.

“Hey there, newbie. Nice to see your pretty green eyes open. Here,” Crud-rocker said, with a smile full of points, “have some blood. You need to keep your strength up.”

The vamp was holding out a blood bag, and Dean leaned towards it, involuntarily, his stomach protesting with hunger urges stronger than anything he’d ever felt before. Strangely, it helped Dean focus. He knew what he had to do.

He’d been assessing his surroundings and thought he had the measure of this place and its occupants. He still had all his weapons, an error of judgement Crud-rocker wouldn’t make again. He gripped the smooth handle of his machete, letting his index finger slide down the sheath to test the sharpness of the cold steel.

Dean smiled back at Crud-rocker, lips stretched wide over his own extra teeth. Show time.

 

 **::-Dean-::**

Fortunately for the human population of Limestone, the vampire’s nest was a long way out of town, but conveniently situated on a road that led straight to the spaceport where the Impala was docked. Drenched in viscous, black vampire blood and stinking of iron and rot, Dean found the road and ran, his hand still clenched around the handle of his dripping machete.

 His fangs sunk deep into his own lips, and he swallowed down his own blood as he ran, as if any red liquid could quench his raging thirst.

Sam’s voice was in his head, but that was impossible, because Sam was dead, wasn’t he? Dean shook his head, his mind full of bullish rage and visions of death. How many vampires had he just killed? He’d lost count.

 _Dean, you need to get back to the Impala. I have the cure, but you need to come home so I can give it to you._

Sam’s words buzzed and crackled and made no sense. Sam was dead. Sam was a machine. Nothing mattered now. He didn’t have a home any more, he’d run away from Lisa and Ben because Sam was alive/dead. Here/gone.

Dean was a monster. _Sam_ had made him a monster.

Dean slowed and spat a gobbet of bright blood onto the concrete landing pad. He was briefly distracted when it made a pattern like the Crab Nebula, but Dean didn’t stop moving, just toppled forward until the floor met his face and his momentum finally halted.

 **::-Sam-::**

Sam watched, helpless, through his own external sensors as well as through Dean’s eyes, as Dean slowed to a stuttering stagger on the approach to the Impala. Dean was so close, but then his stagger became a collapse and Dean dropped like a felled tree.

Luckily for Sam, Dean was only a short distance from the Impala’s ramp, and he was able to use the fixer-bots to roll his unconscious brother onto a stretcher and wheel him aboard. Manoeuvring him into the med bay was a challenge, but once safely inside with a force screen deployed, Sam’s problems were only just beginning. Dean regained consciousness but was feverish and raging beyond reason. Sam’s efforts to talk to Dean via the implant caused more distress than using the ship’s audio system, so Sam quickly switched from internal to external communication, though eventually he had to acknowledge that neither method was getting through.

“Dean, please let me give you the antidote.” Sam wasn’t above begging.

“Fuck off, don’t you fucking touch me!” Dean raged, drops of sweat running down his face. He was back on his feet, crouched in a fighting stance, his hands dark-crusted with the blood of the vampires he’d slain. Every few minutes his body would shudder, wracked with waves of pain he refused to acknowledge.

Sam withdrew. He needed to think.

It was abundantly clear, as if Sam needed any further confirmation, that his plan had been fundamentally flawed. The V in Dean’s system was sending his fragile human body into overload, and it was difficult even for Sam to weigh up all the different variables and work out how long Dean could last before his heart gave out, or his brain fried. Sam had miscalculated. Clearly the ingestion of the blood was a key part of the survival process, and omitting the blood meant the subject would not gain the full advantage of the transformation into a vampire. There was no halfway stage where Dean could live forever but lose the cravings for human blood. All Sam had done was administer a poison that was killing Dean slowly, and agonisingly.

Sam pondered but couldn’t see any solution as long as Dean refused to allow Sam to administer the Λ antidote.  If Sam had use of his body, he could have held his brother down and injected him, but as it was, Dean had already destroyed three of the fixer-bots Sam had deployed to do the job. The only option seemed to be waiting for Dean’s body to shut down so he could try to get a bot into the med bay quickly, and hope Λ was fast acting enough to prevent Dean’s death.

In the background, unheeded by Sam, his systems were running the many routines required to keep his body – the Impala’s body - functional. Diagnostics on the flight systems; backups; programming the fixer-bots to carry out routine inspections and repairs that sent them scurrying through conduits and vents too small for the human maintenance (human maintenance being Dean) to reach or fit through.

In the med bay, Dean was screaming.

His brother was screaming in the agony of withdrawal from the V drug, and Sam heeded that over all else.

He didn’t even notice Castiel’s ship docking, or the airlocks opening. He was unaware of the angel’s presence until Castiel was standing in command, demanding Sam show himself.

“Castiel,” Sam said, shocked that he’d allowed himself to become so preoccupied that someone, albeit a friend, had been able to board Baby without him noticing. “What are you doing here?”

Castiel frowned, looking around as if he expected someone to jump up from behind one of the consoles. “What do you mean, what am I doing here. You called for help, Sam. I am in the middle of a war, California is in turmoil thanks to Raphael, but I dropped everything to answer your call.”

Cas looked around again, and if anything, his frown was deepening. “Why are you speaking to me via the comms? Where are you, and where is Dean?”

“I didn’t call you,” Sam said, but even as the words formed and the sound waves generated, he found it, buried deep in the communications records. His own distress signal, sent the moment he’d brought Dean aboard. A subspace-wave sent by Sam’s subconscious, a plea for help sent on a private channel directly to Castiel.

Before Sam could say anything else, Dean cried out again, the pained almost-scream carrying clearly through the ship’s main corridor into the command centre.

Castiel moved, and was out of the door and striding down the ship’s spine towards the sound faster than a slingshot manoeuver round a moon. Sam followed.

“Cas, I didn’t mean to call you, but I—we do need your help.” Sam was surprised to find that it was actually a relief to admit it. Castiel’s stride faltered when Sam’s voice tracked with him down the corridor, but picked up again when Dean’s cries didn’t stop.

So Sam explained as best he could en route - what had happened, both to him, and what he’d done to Dean. He didn’t say why he’d decided turning Dean was a good plan, but from the expression on Castiel’s face, the angel thought he had a very good understanding of Sam’s motives. Which Sam envied if true, because right now he was having a hard time remembering why it had seemed like such a great idea. All the data he’d collected back then no longer made the same sense it had when he’d deliberately sent Dean onto Limestone, merely to test a theory.

Having the cure wasn’t the easy option Sam had envisaged. He’d been careless, uncaring, _inhuman_ in his reasoning, and now his brother was suffering because Sam had made decisions based on computations, and because Sam no longer had a human hands to administer an injection.  Λ was useless if he couldn’t get the drug into Dean’s veins. 

He’d been wrong about so many things.

Sam trailed his consciousness like a whipped dog after Castiel to med bay, where the angel stopped in the doorway, unable to enter until Sam lowered the force field he’d put in place to contain his brother – for Dean’s protection, but also to stop Dean harming the ship and Sam.

Sam realised that he’d been avoiding monitoring inside the room since he’d mentally prodded Dean there. After Dean had smashed the third bot into smithereens Sam had given up trying to administer the antidote. He’d left Dean alone to deal with the effects of the vampire drug raging through his system while Sam took them out of Limestone’s orbit. In as far as Sam could manage given his circumstances, he’d run away rather than deal with the problem.

Lost in his own guilt, it took Sam a moment to realise Castiel was talking to him.

“Sam. Lower the field. I need to help Dean.”

Castiel was fiddling with the control panel on the door, and Sam couldn’t allow that. He was willing to try and reason with Cas before taking more drastic action, so he refrained from making the panel give the angel a shock.

“Cas, wait. If you go in there now, we’re going to lose him. It’s been fourteen hours since the vampire injected him with V. Look at him. He’s going crazy for fresh blood; he needs it worse than an oblivion addict needs Vismrti. Just like demon blood withdrawal.”

Sam knew by the way Castiel’s shoulders stiffened that he was getting through. “You know I know what I’m talking about, Cas. There’s no way we can reverse the effects of V if he feeds; and you? You’re a walking blood bank.”

Looking through the force field, Sam’s camera eye could see the same scene that faced Castiel. The room was wrecked. Medical supplies were scattered across every surface, while the treatment couch had been wrenched off its space-safe moorings and thrown into a wall. Dean was on his feet but swaying like seaweed in a strong tide, his back to the doorway. Something must have alerted him to Castiel’s presence, because he suddenly spun on his axis and was moving towards the force field faster than should be humanly possible. Sam couldn’t blame Cas for making a shocked sound and jumping backwards as Dean flung his whole body into the field, making it crackle and spark. Dean’s face was contorted into an almost unrecognisable picture of fury, his skin an odd mixture of grey and mottled red that made him look like the veined volcanic rocks on Yellowstone.

For a moment Sam thought Dean would continue to batter himself against the barrier, but after a couple of seconds a look of recognition passed through Dean’s reddened eyes, and the tide of rage ebbed out of his features. He took a single step back.

“Cas? What the hell are you doing here?” Dean’s voice was normally deep but now it sounded raw and strained, like he’d been swallowing hot coals.

“Sam called for my help. There’s a cure that will reverse what the vampire did to you. It’s called Lambda, but Sam tells me that you refuse to allow his bots to administer it.”

Dean shook his head, as if Castiel’s words were flies buzzing round and irritating him. Sam could barely suppress his own irritation at the bullish expression on Dean’s face. His brother’s response was both frustrating and typical.

“Never mind me. What about Sam, Cas. Can you fix him?”

Castiel’s head swivelled and he looked up to where the camera Sam was using was blinking its red light. He spoke directly to Sam, even though his reply was ostensibly aimed at Dean.

“I don’t know, Dean. Does Sam even want to be fixed?”

It was a question Sam couldn’t answer. He’d made such a mess of everything. Did he even deserve a second chance? But he did know he wanted Dean restored. If promising to allow Cas to ‘fix’ him got Dean to acquiesce to taking the necessary dose of Λ, then that’s what Sam would do.

“If you can save Dean, we can talk about me,” Sam said. That seemed to satisfy Dean, because he took another step back from the doorway and slumped down to sit on the med-bay floor, as if he was trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. Castiel, on the other hand, gave Sam’s camera a cynical raised eyebrow, but didn’t comment, just asked for the antidote.

Sam didn’t waste any time, he didn’t think Dean had much of that left. He sent another fixer-bot with a full syringe of Λ, and switched off the force field so Castiel could enter the room. He was done making stupid mistakes, so he flicked the screen back on as soon as the angel was inside.

Dean fangs were bared and he was shaking from the effort of holding himself in check, but Sam had to hand it to Castiel. The angel showed no fear, just crouched down next to his friend and helped Dean shuck off his jacket and roll up a sleeve to bare a nice plump vein to take the needle. Sam could hear the low murmur of their voices but made no attempt to tune his receptors into their conversation.

He didn’t even watch; he knew Cas had it in hand, that Dean would be okay now.  The use of Lambda wasn’t experimental; all the test results had been available on Campbell’s database. The process wasn’t pretty, and Dean might suffer much more pain than Campbell-Corps test subjects, none of whom had such a long gap between their dose of V and the antidote.

It felt disloyal not to remain, bearing witness, but Sam turned off all his interfaces regardless. It wasn’t as if he could do anything useful. He couldn’t even put his arms around his brother and hold him while he screamed. Sam shut down everything apart from his connection to the command centre and the automotive functions needed to keep the Impala on track, so he could consider his options without any distractions. He had some decisions to make.

  
  


  
**Chapter 6**  


  
  


**::-Sam-::**

It was Castiel who brought Sam back online. Sam noted that four hours and fifteen minutes had passed in the interim, and that Cas looked weary. There was a purpling bruise on one sharp cheekbone and his full lips were dry and cracked, like he’d been biting them.

The first thing Sam did was check on Dean.

His brother was lying on his bunk in his quarters, life signs weak but steady, no cause for alarm. Dean’s face was calm in sleep, lashes dark against skin whose pallor was greater than mere space-pale, but Sam took heart from the absence of that almost zombie-like mottling that marred his brother’s features while the drug was raging through him.

Castiel was talking, telling Sam what he’d deduced, that the treatment had worked, and Dean was as well as could be expected. Sam interrupted.

“You implied there was a way to restore my mind to my body. Is that true?”

Castiel hesitated, but nodded.

“It is possible, in theory. But, Sam, your merger with Lucifer damaged you in ways even I can’t quantify. Separating you from Lucifer’s consciousness was…difficult. I may not have been entirely successful.”

Sam remembered the voice that had helped persuade him to deceive Dean, to harm his brother. Now, with a sudden shock that reverberated through his processors, Sam remembered why it had seemed familiar.  Sam was certain Castiel had indeed failed to remove all of Lucifer; something of the archangel survived, insidious and hidden deep in Sam’s circuits.

“That makes it even more urgent that I return my consciousness to my human body. If you really think there’s even a small part of the Devil inside this A.I., just think of the damage he…I could do like this. I have access to the entire IG-web, I can hack almost anything – governments, corporations, weapon systems…”

Castiel blinked, shutters coming down over those fierce blue eyes, and Sam knew the angel was going to dissemble. Or at the very least, not give Sam the whole truth.

“Such a restoration is beyond my capabilities or the resources we have at our disposal,” Cas said and there, Sam thought, was the first lie. “It would require the construction of unbreakable fail-safes inside your mind, and I don’t know anyone who has the skill to carry out such a task.” Sam thought the former was truth, the latter another lie. It didn’t matter. The knowledge that it was possible was all Sam required. He didn’t need an angel’s help to deal with this; he didn’t need Castiel’s support or his lack of resources or his concealments.

“You should leave now,” Sam said, making sure his tone was imbued with the utmost finality. Castiel did not argue. The angel had a war to fight, after all. Let Castiel tell himself that the Winchesters were a distraction from a bigger picture; whatever he needed to assuage his own guilty conscience.

Sam watched Castiel’s vessel cast loose, listening to the reassuring silence of space. The solution lay inside himself. Or he should say, inside the Impala’s A.I., where Sam resided. It might be a gamble; there was a possibility that Sam was wrong and could lose everything that made him Sam Winchester, that he would become a machine in truth. He’d been wrong before, and Dean had borne the brunt of that failure. But this time, if he failed, it was only Sam that would suffer. Dean would be okay. Dean had already lost Sam once and survived – twice if you counted Cold Oak. Sam was confident it was worth the risk.

Sam altered the Impala’s course from it’s random trajectory and set it for the Dakotas. He performed a final sweep to ensure all his systems were glitch free and the autopilot was engaged. He made one last check that Dean was still sleeping peacefully, with his life signs getting stronger by the minute, before he sent his consciousness questing deep into the Impala’s AI.

He reached the core and began work, building around all the holes in his memories. He found the globe of blue-white light at the centre of the darkness and recognised it at last. He wondered how he hadn’t sensed it before – the residue of something slimy, a lingering wrongness. The remnant of Lucifer’s grace pulsed and Lucifer’s voice dripped honey-poison as Sam worked.  He tried to shut out, but it was hard.

 _Sam… don’t you want to live forever? Don’t you want to fly free and high, away from this human prison, to leave behind that sack of blood and bile that stops you reaching your full potential? Think of the power you are throwing away, Sam; together we could touch the Hand of God, together we could rule the universe…_

Sam refused to reply, just continued with his circuit-weaving. It was a plotting of complex coordinates, a construction that at any other time Sam might have found beautiful. Now, he was more concerned with making something indestructible; as Castiel had said, making an unbreakable wall that Sam could depend on to keep all the damage Lucifer had caused locked up tight forever. He wasn’t sure whether the construction he was creating would remain inside the Impala’s systems, or whether it was all part of the whatever it was that made up Sam’s consciousness. Maybe it would be brought across with everything else that made Sam himself and not someone else, when he completed the transfer. Either way, the construction needed to be seamless. Not so much as pentaquark could be allowed to escape.

Lucifer’s white light flared nova-bright in protest. Sam ignored it and after a while the walls were so tightly woven around both the dark and the light that they were invisible to even the closest scrutiny.

Once everything was secure, Sam would find his way through the many intricate paths he’d been unconsciously nurturing all this time, and return to where his body was gradually thawing in its cryopod.

The plan was in motion, there was no turning back.

 **::-Dean-::**

Dean woke with a start, unsure of what had disturbed his slumber.  He opened his eyes.

Even that smallest of motions in moving his eyelids set off a cacophony of aches and pains. His whole body felt like he’d been trampled underfoot by an Earth elk. Worse, he must have stood up only to be knocked down by a whole herd of the fuckers. He groaned, knowing he couldn’t lie on his bunk forever.

He sat up quickly, hoping to out-move the pain. It almost worked except once he was upright, he remembered everything, and that hurt worse than the bodily aches that hit as his muscles settled into their new positions.

Sam – the ship Sam, machine Sam – had set him up, sent him into a trap, gotten him _turned_ , for fuck’s sake. His hand flew up to his mouth, pressed at his gums, felt nothing but the reassuring bluntness of his human teeth. His heartbeat slowed, normalised as the adrenaline rush that remembering had triggered ebbed away.

Not a vampire.

Cas had been here. The angel had said something about sorting Sam out after Dean had accepted the vamp cure. Dean remembered that much, followed by the overwhelming fear that he was going to sink his teeth into Castiel’s vulnerable neck before the angel finished emptying a syringe of blue ice into his overheated veins. After that, there had been only the drowning in a freezing ocean of pain until a blessed nothingness swallowed him up.

Dean was on his feet and striding towards the command deck, with nothing more complex in his head than seeing Cas and finding out what had happened with Sam, when an all too human cry rang through the ship.

Dean’s head whipped around, attempting to triangulate the sound before pinning it down as coming from the lower deck, where the cryo-chamber was.

Dean ran.

Sam’s cryo-pod was empty. Dean clutched at his chest as if he could stop his heart trying to jump through his ribcage, then Sam cried out again, and Dean’s brain finally sorted out the shadows and shapes on the floor between the pod and the wall and recognised them as the body of his little brother.

Alive, breathing; writhing in pain.

 

 **::-Sam-::**

Sam was flooded; his central processor was overwhelmed with emotions he shouldn’t be capable of feeling. Rage, hurt, sorrow. Warmth, happiness, joy. It was too much. He would burn out, crash, flick over to a blue screen of death, because he was just a machine, and machines weren’t designed for this.

“Sam, please,” Dean was talking to him, didn’t seem able to stop - urgent, desperate, full of love that Sam didn’t understand or know what to do with. He couldn’t compartmentalise it, there was nowhere with the capacity in his data banks to store this.

“You’re not a machine, Sam,” Dean’s voice was hoarse, rasping in the back of his throat. It sounded like it hurt, but he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t just _stop_. “Sammy. You’re not meant to live inside a circuit board, you’re too complex to be reduced to a sequence of ones and zeros. You’re my brother. You saved the fucking world and I-- I need you, okay?”

Sam wanted to scream. He wanted to hit Dean, punch him right in those perfect white teeth to shut him up, because every word Dean was uttering was painful in a way that shouldn’t have been possible. But he couldn’t move, he couldn’t reach out and touch Dean, couldn’t wipe away the tears that trickled slowly down Dean’s face, any more than he could lash out or grip Dean’s shoulders and shake him.

White light consumed him. Darkness, all the blacker for the light that preceded it, swallowed him after.

 **::-Dean-::**

Dean thought his heart was going to give out under the barrage. In this last cycle he’d lost too much – Sam twice in different ways, Lisa, Ben, and the fragile sense of equilibrium he’d gained for a while on Cicero. But now Sam was apparently back in his own body, his soul restored but consciousness fled, and Dean was none the wiser about anything. Bobby’s grizzled face stared at him from the comscreen, the old man somehow managing to look pissed off and concerned at the same time.

“Son, slow down. Now take a deep breath and start over. You’re telling me Sam is alive, but he’s in the deep freeze? And that you were a vampire but now you’re not?”

Dean wiped his hand over his face and tried to compose himself, wishing he’d contacted Bobby earlier, when Sam was inside the ship. It would have been easier to explain that part with Sam the Ship to back him up, because otherwise the whole story sounded like the worst kind of science fiction.

“Yeah, this drug, Lambda, it reversed the turning-into-a-vamp process, so I’m fine now. Don’t look at me like that, Bobby. It wasn’t Sam’s fault – or rather, it wasn’t really _Sam_ who did it, see?” Dean moved quickly on in the face of Bobby’s frown. “Anyhow, Sam’s not in the ship or frozen any more. But he was in cryo, until he managed to transfer himself into the ship’s A.I. and take it over. I don’t know exactly how. Then Cas was here to help with the vamp cure thing, and now Sam, he’s back in his body, but I don’t know what state his mind is in. He’s in the med bay now, unconscious. The last time I could get anything out of him, he thought he was still a machine, and he’s been out of it since. Bobby, I don’t know what to do.”

“Look, Dean, you’re on your way here, right?”

Dean nodded wearily, wishing for all sorts of reasons that Sam had listened to him and never changed their course to fucking Limestone. “Good. So we’ll deal with Sam when you arrive. Don’t land at the Sioux Falls spaceport, you know there’s plenty of space out back here at the yard, and we can get Sam inside nice and easy and quiet-like. It’s probably not a good idea for news of his resurrection to get out into the hunter community just yet. There’s still too many folks as blame you boys for what went down with the apocalypse, and for the troubles in Cascadia.”

Dean sighed. Living on the Fringe sucked sometimes. The angel civil war raging across Callie, Washington and Oregon would have been a hundred times worse, and not contained to Cascadia, if Sam hadn’t sacrificed himself to defeat Lucifer. But getting word out was hard without access to the publicity machinery available to the establishment.

Huh. At least on the fringes he didn’t have to pay taxes.

Before Castiel had left, he’d had left a garbled message, something about important fire-walls inside Sam’s brain. Then he’d gone running back to his precious war with Raphael instead of cleaning up his messes here. Dean wasn’t clear what Cas had meant, and now the damned angel wasn’t answering any of Dean’s pings.

Guess it was down to him and Bobby to mend whatever needed mending inside Sam - as if they had any experience of putting someone back together after he’d had the Devil controlling him, spent who knows how long in relative time trapped inside a black hole with a pissed off angel before metronoming his consciousness between a spaceship’s A.I. and a damaged body.

Yeah, fixing Sam was going to be as easy as spacewalking through an ion storm.

 

 **::-Sam-::**

“Do you think he’ll remember anything?”

“Why you askin’ me? Ain’t nothing in no book to tell how something like this’ll affect a man.”

“Guess you’ll be writing up something new for your database then, hey, Bobby?”

Sam let the cadence of the familiar voices wash over him, not really paying attention to the meaning of the words that floated through to where he was lying. There was something nagging at the corners of his mind but he ignored it, too content to just exist in the moment to worry about anything.  For once in his life Sam wanted to simply be.

His head was empty as a cosmic supervoid, not a single thought there to leave a light trail in its wake. There was nothing except pure sensation for Sam to revel in. He was as hungry for it as if he’d been starved for a century or two.

His skin was hypersensitive. He could feel every place he was in contact with the mattress underneath him, the quilt draped over his body. The mattress was spongy yet lumpy at the same time, the sheets cool whenever he shifted slightly to move onto a patch not already warmed by his body heat.

His nostrils flared, each breath tickled his nasal hairs and filled his head with the scent of his own warm skin, clean linen and faint after-traces of that sandalwood citrus cleanser Dean liked to use when there was water available to wash in.

The lack of a residual hum in the air or vibrations in his bed told him he was planet side. There must be a window open because gentle breeze wafted over his face, raising the hairs on his arms where they lay on top of the covers, and bringing in something outdoorsy that jumbled together the smell of gasoline with earth and tree resin. Even without the evidence of the voices, his nose told Sam exactly where he was.

He was in the downstairs room in Bobby’s place, the one they used when they arrived with some injury or other and it was too much trouble to lug one or the other of them upstairs.

That thought pricked the skin of the iridescent bubble Sam had been floating in, and his moment of blissful calm popped, disappearing into the aether.

Sam didn’t think he was injured. But if he wasn’t hurt, why was he apparently drugged up to the eyeballs? More to the point, why was he _here_?

“Fuck, Bobby, it’s been days. Why won’t he wake up?”

This time Sam comprehended Dean’s words as well as hearing his voice, and urgency filled his void.

Truth was, Sam had never been completely empty. Even if he could have removed all the particles in his universe, shield against all electric and magnetic fields, Sam would still contain the gravity that was Dean, because Dean could never be shielded or cancelled out. Gravity didn't go away, and it was always attractive. There was nothing Sam could do to block Dean, even if he wanted to.  Which he didn’t, especially when Dean sounded so - anguished. Broken.

Sam fought with the bedcover – god, he was as weak as the magnetic field of a distant quasar, and felt about as useful.  Finally he managed to stagger to his feet. He needed to grab onto the wall a couple of times but he was determined. He made it through Bobby’s old-fashioned kitchen and into the archway between the kitchen and study, where he had to pause and catch his breath. He was vaguely aware of Bobby’s presence, but his field of view had narrowed down to one area of focus, Dean’s too-pale, too-tired face.

When he caught sight of Sam, Dean’s eyes widened, huge and green as a startled Silurian woebegone. Something snapped inside of Sam at that. He lurched forward and grabbed his brother, pulling Dean into his chest and holding on like he’d fall without Dean to lean on. Which was the truth. He didn’t notice Dean’s infinitesimal hesitation before he hugged Sam back with a ferocity that equalled Sam’s own.

Sam only let go when his brain caught up with the next impossible thing on a growing list of impossible things. Not only was he in Bobby’s house on South Dakota when the last thing he remembered was light years away in deep space on the rim, but also Bobby was standing right there in all his grumpy glory.  Bobby, who’d been lost, gone, Sam couldn’t quite remember why or how, just that feeling of desolation from losing him.

“You’re alive!” Sam blurted out, thumping Bobby’s back.

Bobby was even more reluctant to be hugged than Dean had been, but Sam didn’t care. The prickly old man would just have to put up with a show of affection for a change. It wasn’t every day even a Winchester came back from the dead.

Oh god. Sam wasn’t the only one back from the dead, was he? The images that flooded his mind filled Sam with horror. He let go and stepped away from both of them, stammering apologies that fell like stones from his numb lips. It took Dean a while to convince Sam neither of them blamed him for Lucifer’s actions, but Sam still shook with the horror of it. His mind’s eye couldn’t unsee Bobby’s violent death, Castiel’s bloody ending, or the hurt he’d dealt out to Dean.

“It wasn’t you, Sammy, and we’re okay, see? We’re all alive, we’re all still here,” Dean murmured like a mantra in Sam’s ear, a low rumble of comfort, placing Sam’s open hand on his chest so Sam could feel Dean’s heart beating.

Sam allowed himself to be steered into the kitchen though he noticed Bobby didn’t follow. The tension in the air only released when his stomach decided to make a protest loud enough to be heard across the space between one Dakota and the other.

Bobby let out a gruff noise that might have been a laugh and finally came into the kitchen, noisily opening cupboards and pulling out a couple of cans – tomatoes and lima beans.

“Reckon I’ve got enough to rustle up a Brunswick stew, what’d’ya say, boy?”

Sam’s stomach gave another loud gurgle and he blushed. “Sounds awesome, thanks, Bobby.”

He sat in a silence that was comfortable until he started wondering why the way his sitting bones pressed almost painfully into the hardness of the wooden chair felt so good; or why the scent wafting in through the open window next to the kitchen table – damp soil and vegetation decomposing that must be from Bobby’s compost recycler – was making him want to inhale like he was smelling the finest perfume. Bobby had only opened one of the cans of tomatoes but the rich red scent had Sam’s mouth watering. Once he noticed his extreme reactions, Sam couldn’t let it go.

“How long…?” He swallowed, started again. “What happened… you know, after?”

Dean and Bobby exchanged a look Sam couldn’t decipher, and Sam’s heart started beating faster. Bobby turned back to his cooking, his broad back clearly telling Dean to sort this one out. Dean took a seat opposite Sam. His face, spacer-pale with a bit more stubble than Dean usually allowed, gave nothing away. Sam was wound tighter than a nanogenerator coil, his breath rasping in his throat as his anxiety ratcheted up a notch. Fear made him aggressive, and he lashed out first.

“You never even tried, did you? You promised me you’d try for normal, stay planet side with Lisa, but you went back out there, didn’t you? Drifting in the black, hunting, putting your life at risk. What did you do to get me back, Dean?”

Dean leaned across the worn wooden table and caught Sam’s wildly waving hands in his own, his grip loose and gentle, but firm. His hands were warm and rough, and the familiarity of the touch calmed Sam. Dean released Sam’s hands but never broke his gaze, his eyes that clear green that had always reminded Sam of the Teton lakes on Wyoming.

“I went to Cicero, Sam, right after Cas healed me. Lived with Lisa and Ben for a while. Didn’t work out.”

Dean glanced away then, but not before Sam saw sadness tighten the edges of his brother’s eyes. For once, Sam didn’t push. Something else Dean had said snagged his attention.

“’For a while’. You said you lived with Lisa for a while. And then you left. So how long was I…gone?”

“Four G-semesters,” Dean said, then frowned when Bobby made an odd coughing noise, like he disagreed. Sam made some calculations in his head. He remembered Castiel (when had he seen Cas? Wasn’t he dead too?) telling him he’d extracted Sam from the Cage after four semesters, which, looking at the star date on Bobby’s kitchen clock, left at least a semester unaccounted for. Dean’s evasiveness and the guarded expression on Bobby’s face were giving Sam a bad feeling.

He was distracted by Bobby shoving a huge plateful of stew in front of him. The smell alone was enough to wipe his mind clean of any thought more coherent than filling his empty stomach, and when he next looked up Dean was smiling, his eyes soft at the corners with that fond look he reserved for Sam.

Though Sam was sure there was more to his missing time than either Dean or Bobby was saying, something deep inside him was telling him to let it lie.

They spent two days at Bobby’s, with Dean spending most of the time out in Bobby’s yard helping the old man repair some space junker that was probably beyond saving. But Dean was happy. Sam could hear him through the open windows, whistling a tuneless accompaniment to Sam’s own puttering around, using Bobby’s computers to do aimless research about nothing.

Dean kept asking him was he feeling okay, but he wasn’t sure how he was feeling. On the one hand he was revelling in his ability to taste and smell and touch. He didn’t understand the impulse, but he couldn’t stop stroking his fingertips across every surface, testing the variety of textures. He wanted to eat even though he wasn’t hungry, just so he could bliss out as the different tastes – sweet, sour, earthy – exploded on his tongue. He’d go stand outside to watch Dean and Bobby working just so he could feel the warmth of the Dakota twin suns on his skin and breathe deep of the smell of engine oil and Dean’s sweat as he passed by the junker.

On the evening of Sam’s third day awake, Bobby handed Dean a case in the Minnesota system, a possible haunting. Dean’s eyes lit up and Sam knew he was thinking of the vast open star-scapes and the freedom of the black, but then his face shuttered, wary, as he glanced over at Sam.

“I’m not sure, Bobby. Maybe I should finish off the work on the XD-17 first. Isn’t there any hunter closer?”

Sam rolled his eyes and snatched the infotab out of Bobby’s hand before Dean even finished his question.

“Oh cool, Dean, look. The case is in one of the outliers, Thief River Falls. We could swing by the Alexandria Magnetar.” He watched Dean, careful to keep his own expression easy, casual. He didn’t want to show Dean how desperate he was to take this case. The moment Bobby offered this chance, Sam felt an overwhelming need to be on the move – to run away? to atone? – he didn’t want to examine his own reasons too deeply.  He could see Dean wavering.

“The magnetar? Is it active?”

Sam pressed his advantage, hiding a smile. “Yeah, it’s going through some serious star quakes; should be a real powerful gamma-ray flare display going on right now. But if you want to finish the XD-17…”

Dean grabbed the infotab, scanning it rapidly. “Can’t play when there’s work to be done, Sammy boy. Better go pack.”

 

 **::-Dean-::**

Sam was fine. He was inexplicable, a mystery, but that was normal.

Of course, Dean couldn’t help watching him, but that was nothing new. Dean had been watching since Sam was a babe in arms, so he wasn’t going to break the habit of a lifetime just because Sam had freaky artificial walls inside his mind. Some things were different – for instance, it was Sam who set their course for Thief River Falls, and as the hours passed in the peaceful boredom of the black, Dean increasingly ceded interactions with the ship to Sam. Dean wasn’t sure this was a good idea, considering where Sam had just come from, but it made Sam happy to interface with Baby, so Dean couldn’t find it in his heart to object. Even though he was starting to feel like a superfluous booster engine round the two of them.

Apart from this role reversal in their relationship with the Impala, they readily fell into their old rhythms; teasing each other about random shit, long comfortable silences over meals that Dean still prepared, knocking shoulders sharing a bunk to watch old movies. Dean was occasionally reminded that this wasn’t the old days when he wandered into command to find Sam deep in conversation with the ship, but on the whole, given Castiel’s dire warnings and Bobby’s pessimism, Dean thought things were going pretty well. When Sam pushed that stupidly long hair out of his eyes and smiled, Dean was shocked to recognise that the unfamiliar warm feeling in his chest was close to happiness.

 **::-Sam-::**

Sam was content.

He felt Dean’s eyes follow him everywhere, but that was comforting in its familiarity. They’d never worried too much about personal space; it was hard to maintain an illusion of privacy on a ship the size of the Impala, and this was all Sam had ever known. It had been even worse when Dad had been there with them, which was probably why Sam and Dad had always clashed so badly.

Since they’d left Bobby’s, Sam had felt even more at home on the ship than he remembered, as if every nut and bolt and circuit were part of him. He breathed deep of the recycled air, he endlessly invented opportunities for physical closeness with Dean just to revel in the warmth of the touch of Dean’s hand rubbing the back of his neck in absent-minded affection, or casually smacking Sam’s butt when passing by on his way to rustle up something tasty in the galley.

There were gaps in his memory, Sam was aware, but it didn’t bother him too much. He was sure he’d remember, eventually. When the time was right.

::

  
**::-Epilogue-::**

  


In a cocoon of woven shadows, Lucifer’s fragmentary grace is singing.

 _On a raven’s wing, I’ll fly you to heaven_  
_I’ll burn you with golden eyes of ember_  
_Come fly with me to heaven_  
_Come touch the Hand of God_  
_I’ll make you a king_  
_I’ll make us both kings_.

  
**::-END-::**

  


**Author's Note:**

> The overall inspiration for making Sam into the ship comes from Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship who Sang, though it’s only the loosest conceptual relationship! Lucifer’s song at the end is a re-phrasing of The White Buffalo’s Come Join the Murder.


End file.
